Setanta thought it had a sporting chance. It lost | Business | The Guardian The Observer Setanta thought it had a sporting chance. It lost It won rights to Premier League football and a range of other sports - but come the credit crunch, its private equity investors lost heart at the prospect of battling BSkyB. James Robinson reports Saturday 27 June 2009 19.01 EDT First published on Saturday 27 June 2009 19.01 EDT Share on Messenger Close When Setanta founders Michael O'Rourke and Leonard Ryan told staff that the company was to be placed into administration last week, the 200 or so London-based employees stood up and applauded at the end of their address. Sources at accountancy firm Deloitte, appointed to manage the administration process, say it is the first time they have witnessed that kind of reaction to such news. Employees facing redundancy usually respond with angry words and executives often struggle to make themselves heard amid allegations of mismanagement and questions about pay-offs.

But the mood at the meeting, according to those present, was one of resignation rather than bitterness - reflecting the admiration for how Ryan and O'Rourke had taken on a dominant industry player, pay-TV giant BSkyB, and narrowly failed to challenge its monopoly on live sport. Sky's competitors, including Virgin Media and Top Up TV, were quick to point to Setanta's demise as evidence of market failure, though many observers believe the company's private equity backers, blinded by City short-termism, lost their nerve and walked away when the money markets froze. Sky's chief operating officer, Mike Darcy, says: "Setanta ran into difficulties because it tried to grow too fast and lost control of costs. It took on more than £1bn of sports rights and its private equity backers refused to honour those commitments." Now the industry is waiting to see if media regulator Ofcom can achieve what Setanta could not by forcing Sky to offer its premium content, including top-flight football, to other platforms at an affordable price. On Friday, Ofcom published its latest report on the pay-TV market, which has been going on for two years.

It said it might force Sky to reduce what it charges rivals and seek "further commitments" from the Premier League about making games available to other broadcasters. Sky will fiercely oppose that move, and has already said it will challenge it in the courts if it is implemented. That is likely to delay a solution for years, and Ofcom's tough talk has come too late to save Setanta. The fear is that no one will attempt to challenge Sky's hegemony now that a cash-rich rival has demonstrated that going head-to-head with the company only ever ends in failure. The Setanta story is a compelling one because it started out in the early 1990s as a two-man operation screening Irish football games to expats in London pubs. However, it is also one of the first high-profile failures of the post credit-crunch era: a morality tale about private equity companies that borrowed money cheaply on the back of a long economic boom but pushed a company with more than 400 employees into administration when they realised they couldn't make a quick return on their investment. Setanta fought hard to avoid that fate, narrowly failing to secure a last-minute rescue deal with American billionaire Leonard Blavatnik.

Former executives are bitter that the Premier League acted so quickly to take back Setanta's existing rights to top-flight football, selling them to US sports network ESPN, after it failed to make a £10m payment. If they had been given another 72 hours, they insist, the Blavatnik deal would have been sealed and the league would have received their money. In truth, the crucial moment came at the start of the year, when Setanta failed to hold on to the rights to 46 live Premier League games from 2010 onwards: Sky, which had a monopoly on games until 2007, won back 23 matches after outbidding Setanta. Executives claim they had told investors, including private equity firm Doughty Hanson and venture capital outfit Balderton Capital, that Setanta should table a higher bid to avoid that outcome - preparing a detailed document that accurately predicted how much the rights would sell for - but were overruled. That deprived Setanta of its most valuable asset, and made the task of pushing subscribers up from 1.2 million to two million, which would have allowed it to break even, virtually impossible.

If investors had allowed them to spend just £5m more, executives contend, the outcome would have been different. "We have been in the business for years and we knew how it works," says one. At a board meeting the day after the Premier League awarded Setanta just 23 games, the company's private equity backers turned on the management for failing to adequately manage the press reaction to the deal. Shortly afterwards one of them, director of corporate development Richard Brooke, resigned. The company had reached stasis, with Ryan and O'Rourke at war with Doughty and the management stuck in the middle. Former Setanta executives contrast the short-term approach of Doughty and others with the long-term view taken by Rupert Murdoch, who has spent two decades establishing Sky as part of the broadcasting landscape. In the early 1990s, his sprawling media empire News Corp was itself on the brink of bankruptcy, largely because of the money it had lavished on Sky. It was saved because Murdoch borrowed heavily against the future profits of his British tabloids, including the Sun. "Setanta had a good year in 2007, not such a good one in 2008 and the [private equity] houses took fright.

If Murdoch had been that timid, Sky would never have happened," according to the former Setanta executive. Setanta had built an impressive portfolio of sports rights, including the Premier League deal, a share of FA Cup and England games, live Guinness Premiership rugby, US PGA golf, boxing and India's Twenty20 cricket league, the IPL. The plan was not to reach parity with Sky but to establish Setanta as strong secondary player. If that had been achieved, it would have resulted in an equilibrium of sorts, with Sky privately agreeing not to bid against Setanta for the rights it felt it could do without. However, others detected a strategic shift at Setanta, which repeatedly emphasised that it saw itself as an adjunct to Sky, a complementary service rather than an alternative home for sports fans, when it first announced its arrival as a major player in 2006. In May that year, it shocked the sporting world by outbidding Sky for the rights to two of the six packages of Premier League games, each made up of 23 matches.

The European Commission had laid down strict rules on how the auction should be conducted the previous year, forcing the Premier League to sell at least one of those packages to a broadcaster other than Sky, but Sky had been expected to win five of them. Setanta's language after that landmark bid was conciliatory, but once it had received hundreds of million of pounds from Doughty and Balderton, it set out on a spending spree, securing the rights to boxing, golf and cricket - and overpaying for many of them. Some wonder if Setanta's management, a phalanx of former Sky Sports who included its old deputy director Trevor East, had seen an opportunity to prove to their former bosses they could achieve alone what Sky had accomplished through corporate might - and pocket a greater share of the rewards. Could Setanta's demise owe as much to hubris as it did to the alleged failing of the financial institutions who bankrolled it? Its management concedes there were occasions when that view held sway, but only in the heat of the moment. They admit that customer service was a problem, particular in the early days, though that was being fixed.

Sky took time to win over viewers and fans, they say, and was detested by both for years; Setanta had established a recognisable brand name relatively quickly. One thorny problem was that, to watch its Premier League games, viewers felt they were paying twice - once for cable or satellite, and again for Setanta. The number of viewers who failed to renew their subscriptions once they ran out - "churn" in industry jargon - was also high, partly because Setanta offered customers monthly contracts rather than 12-month packages so as to encourage take-up. That problem was particularly acute in the summer, when the football season ended. Setanta bought the UK rights to the star-studded Indian Premier League, in an effort to hold on to viewers in the close season, but it failed to take off in the UK. Those problems might have been solved over time, but the company could not have predicted the sub-prime mortgage crisis or the ensuing recession.

The problem, one former executive concedes, was that the era of cheap money ended at a time when Setanta was still in expansionary mode: "The UK business was a monster that needed to be fed huge amounts of cash." Efforts are continuing to save Setanta's Irish and international businesses, both of which make modest profits or are forecast to do so soon. If Ryan and O'Rourke can find investors for those operations, they may yet salvage something. Attention has already turned to ESPN, the Disney-owned sports network that has deep pockets and ambitious global expansion plans. Like Setanta used to, it is also describing Sky as a partner rather than a competitor, but there is a crucial difference between the two companies' approach. ESPN has already signed a wholesale agreement with Sky, and Sky will market ESPN's games when the US company sets up a channel to screen them. Fans who want to subscribe will go through Sky - or rival platforms which also show them - in order to so. Setanta was a standalone proposition that carried out that function itself, with all the additional costs that entailed, so it could keep hold of a greater share of subscribers' revenues. Some conspiracy theorists detect signs of collusion between ESPN and Sky, or between Sky and the Premier League.

The pay-TV giant has made English football the richest in the world, and the league was quick to pull the plug on Setanta, they claim. Premier League sources say it had to act quickly to ensure that a television partner was in place before the start of the new season in August. Sky is also an £8bn quoted company hardly likely to go bust, they point out. Perhaps the most intriguing question, given Setanta's collapse, is whether ESPN will bid for more games when the next Premier League auction is held in 2012. Disney has the money to do so and, unlike Setanta, is one of the few media companies that can compete on equal terms with Murdoch. News Corp, the quoted company Murdoch chairs, has a market values of $24bn; Disney is worth nearly twice that. The Celtic Warrior | Media | The Guardian The Celtic Warrior Saturday 6 May 2006 19.38 EDT First published on Saturday 6 May 2006 19.38 EDT Share on Messenger Close It began by serving the smallest of sporting niches, beaming Irish football games to ex-pats in London.

But satellite broadcaster Setanta , named after a mythical Celtic warrior, will soon be reaching a far wider audience. Founded by two young Irish entrepreneurs, Michael O'Rourke and Leonard Ryan, pictured below, over a decade ago, the company has made history by ending BSkyB's monopoly on Premier League football rights - albeit with a little help from the European Union. The company was founded soon after the 1990 World Cup, when O'Rourke and Ryan, then twentysomething professionals working in London, realised that the match between Ireland and Holland wasn't being shown on ITV or BBC. They hired the Top Hat, an Irish pub in West London, to show the game, setting up a satellite link and charging a £10 entry fee. The evening wasn't a success, but although they lost money on the night, O'Rourke and Ryan had stumbled across a valuable market: Irish ex-pats who wanted to watch domestic sport. They subsequently formed Setanta and secured the foreign rights for Gaelic football and hurling, but the business took off when it bought struggling sports network Sportscast soon afterwards, acquiring a valuable satellite network serving 1,500 pubs.

It moved from pub lounges to living rooms six years ago, setting up a TV channel to broadcast direct to British homes on the Sky platform, and last year launched Ireland's first dedicated sports channel, which screens the English Premier League and Formula One racing. Setanta now runs seven satellite channels in seven countries, and last year took full control of NASN, a global channel that screens American sports outside the US. It surprised the industry, and many Scottish football fans, by grabbing the rights to the Scottish Premier League from the BBC in a £35m deal in 2004. It went on to bid for the rights to the English football league (now the Championship) last month, eventually losing out to Sky. Despite its growing reputation as a major player in the global sports rights market, the chances of a tiny Irish broadcaster (turnover €35m) landing Premier League rights still seemed a remote one. But the company signalled the extent of its ambition when it poached Sky executive Trevor East earlier this year, a man who, with his former boss Vic Wakeling, built Sky's sports output from scratch - securing the Premier League rights that were crucial to its early success.

East's appointment, officially confirmed last week, followed that of former Sky finance director Richard Brooke, who is now Setanta 's director of corporate development. The two men masterminded Setanta's bid for two Premier League packages. But much of the money has come from the company's backer, US venture capital giant Benchmark. The west coast fund has bankrolled some of the world's biggest hi-tech success stories, including internet auction site Ebay. Backing two young Irishmen with the nerve to take on a key component of Rupert Murdoch's media empire proves Benchmark isn't afraid to take risks. Now that Setanta has upset the odds by winning two of the available six Premier League packages, its courage is set to be rewarded. Media Man Setanta Sports Setanta Sports is an international sports broadcaster, operating 12 channels in 24 countries. The availability of these channels varies depending on the delivery platform and location. History Setanta Sports was formed in 1990 to facilitate the broadcasting of Irish sporting events to Irish expatriates. More recently the network has expanded and it now broadcasts an extensive array of top live sporting events aimed at international English-speaking audiences.

Setanta Ireland's CEO is Niall Cogley, former Director of Sport at RTÉ. The company's headquarters is 4th Floor, Georges Quay House, 43 Townsend Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. Joint Group CEOs Michael O'Rourke and Leonard Ryan, COO Mark O'Meara and CFO Nigel Brennan are all based in that area. Paul Deegan one of the company's brightest executive prospects left the company by mutual consent in March 2006. Deegan had also retired from the European athletic circuit at the same time. The very name 'Setanta', comes from the name of the ancient Irish Warrior 'Setanta' from Ulster who frequently played the oldest known field sport, hurling, and who was later given the name 'Cúchulainn' as described in the ancient Irish texts of the 'Annals of Ulster'. On May 5th 2006, Setanta broke Sky Sports' three-year monopoly on showing Barclays Premier League football in the UK, successfully bidding £392 million for the rights to show 46 matches per season on its multiplatform subscription channel.

Availability Setanta Sports offers commercial venues in several countries around the world programming of sports such as football (soccer), Gaelic football, hurling, golf, cricket, Australian rules football, rugby union and rugby league and boxing Ireland In Ireland, Setanta Sports' Channels are available on a number of different platforms. Its flagship Channel Setanta Ireland is available for free on UPC Ireland's basic cable package and as a subscription service on Sky Digital. With Sky Digital subscribers receive the full array of Setanta Sports channels — Setanta Sports Ireland, Setanta Sports 1 & 2, Setanta Golf, Setanta Sports News, Liverpool FC TV, Celtic TV, Rangers TV, NASN, Racing UK and Racing World and more recently launched Arsenal TV. Setanta also offers a commercial service for Business premises comprising of Setanta Ireland, Setanta Golf, Setanta Sports 1, Setanta Sports 2, Celtic TV, Rangers TV and Racing World.

Channels * Setanta Sports 2 * Setanta Golf * Racing UK (owned by a consortium of racecourses, but still sold as part of the "Setanta Sports Pack") * Racing World (owned by a consortium of racecourses, but still sold as part of the "Setanta Sports Pack") * Rangers TV * Liverpool FC TV * Arsenal TV * NASN (owned by ESPN since March 2007, but still sold as part of the "Setanta Sports Pack") * Setanta Sports News (a joint venture between Setanta and Virgin Media Television and produced by ITN) United Kingdom In the United Kingdom the Setanta channels are: * Setanta Sports 1 * Setanta Golf * Setanta Ireland * Racing UK (owned by a consortium of racecourses, but still sold as part of the "Setanta Sports Pack") * Racing World (owned by a consortium of racecourses, but still sold as part of the "Setanta Sports Pack") * Rangers TV * Liverpool FC TV * Arsenal TV * NASN (owned by ESPN since March 2007, but still sold as part of the "Setanta Sports Pack") * Setanta Sports News (a joint venture between Setanta and Virgin Media Television and produced by ITN

) Setanta are hoping to have a High-definition channel launched by August 2008, in time for the new Barclays Premiership season.

Availability Setanta Sports is available on cable and the following platforms in the UK: * Freeview Digital Terrestrial Television * Only one channel (Setanta Sports 1) is available via Digital Terrestrial Television and BT Vision. * Only seven channels are available via Virgin Media[2] * Only three channels (Setanta Sports 1, Setanta Sports 2 and Setanta Golf) are available via Setanta by Broadband. Those same three channels are available on Tiscali TV. * The Setanta Ireland channel is only available via Sky Digital and NTL cable. Some programming is restricted for rights reasons.

Selected Rights * 60 live Scottish Premier League matches (2004-2010) * 46 live Barclays Premier League games, plus additional matches for Ireland viewers (2007-2010) * Community Shield (2008-2011) * Live FA Cup football (2008-2011), comprising of: Three games and one replay per round in rounds 3-5 Two Quarter-finals and one Quarter-final replay (if any are required) One semi-final The Final (shared with ITV) * Live England home friendlies & away European Championship and World Cup qualifiers (2008-2011)[3] * Live international away football from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Northern Ireland.

* England under 21 and B games (2008-2011)[3] * Blue Square Premier and Setanta Shield matches (English Non-League) * German Bundesliga * Dutch Eredivisie * Portuguese Liga * PGA Tour events (with the exception of the major championships and the World Golf Championships), Champions Tour and Nationwide Tour events (2007-2012)[4] * Asian Tour golf * Australian National Rugby League (NRL) * Australian Football League (AFL) * Gaelic Athletic Association - O'Byrne Cup,National Football League * ATP Tour tennis * UFC all live events (July 2008 onwards) * Selected top boxing matches * English Premier League rights - £392m over three years. * Scottish Premier League rights - £13.625m per year * PGA Tour - £103m [4] * FA Cup - £150m [7] over four years Criticisms The broadcaster's Digital Terrestrial channel has been criticised for its poor picture quality[citation needed]. This is mainly due to the channel being broadcast at a lower bitrate than the majority of UK digital terrestrial broadcasts.

Security concerns Concerns have been raised over the security and viability of Setanta's digital terrestrial channel provided by Top Up TV because the encryption system was switched from the MediaGuard encryption system (which was cracked in continental Europe in 2004) to the Nagravision encryption system according to the conditional access manufacturer Kudelski. Like Mediaguard, the different versions of Nagravision are insecure and have also been compromised according to media industry studies, external appraisals [2] and numerous discussion websites. The key-based encryption systems, like Nagravison, are fundamentally insecure because the keys and control words necessary to decrypt the television signal are themselves broadcast by the service provider. It is therefore very much easier for hackers to intercept the keys and reverse engineer the smartcards needed to hack the system. In the United Kingdom, advanced conditional access modules for digital televisions and personal video recorders, such as the Dragon, T-Rex and Reality CAMs, that can easily decrypt Nagravision encryptions systems are freely on sale directly from suppliers and on the UK version of eBay.

In addition, cloned smartcards for set top boxes that can decrypt Nagravision are now readily available and are already being traded on certain illicit websites within the UK. This has led to growing speculation that digital terrestrial pay-TV piracy is increasing within the United Kingdom during the 2007/2008 football season due to the much greater use of these public hack cloned cards and advanced conditional access modules. Sky's own Sky Italia service suffered heavy losses due to piracy and more than 3 million Italian homes accessed pay-TV services through hacked decoder cards for conditional access set top boxes and conditional access modules for digital televisions and personal video recorders. Sky Italia had to switch from an insecure key-based system to the secure Videoguard cryptographic algorithm encryption system. This issue has been covered by the Guardian and Financial Times newspapers and the Datamonitor commercial analysis group.[9] [10] [11] [12] Advertising Former BBC and ITV Sport presenter Des Lynam, together with actress Thaila Zucchi starred in the advertising launch of Setanta's coverage of Premier League football from August 2007.

The slogan used in this advert is "Setanta Sports - £9.99 a month, no annual contract." North America Main article: Setanta Sports North America Setanta Sports North America, currently available in the United States, and Canada is split into four parts: * Setanta Sports Channel for domestic and commercial satellite customers, as well IPTV service provider ITVN. * Setanta Premium pay-per-view for commercial venues * Setanta Broadband, offering live and delayed streaming video to broadband computer users. Certain content is archived, including English Premier League soccer and rugby matches. However, the EPL matches are often not archived until at least several days after matches are played, due to licensing and other issues. * Setanta Mobile offering real time live match scores Setanta Sports is currently available on the DISH Network (Channel 406); StarChoice (Channel 239); DIRECTV (Channel 615 with an overflow channel called Setanta Xtra on 670); Bell ExpressVu (Channel 420); GlobeCast WorldTV (Channel 752 - Residential only) and ITVN.com.

Top football features include live English Premiership, UEFA Champions League, Euro 2008 Qualifiers, Coca-Cola Championship, Dutch & French Leagues, Scottish Premier League, German FA Cup, Asian Cup Qualifiers, Asian Champions League and MUTV and ChelseaTV. Setanta Sports North America carries most of the world's top rugby competitions, including the 2007 Rugby World Cup, Six Nations, Tri Nations, Super 14, British & Irish Lions matches, Currie Cup, Heineken Cup, Guinness Premiership, Magners League and EDF Energy Cup, all in union, plus live broadcasts of the Australian NRL and European Super League in league. The network also carries the Australian Football League, the principal competition in Australian rules football. Australia Setanta broadcasts three channels into Australia: * Setanta Sports * Setanta Premium (Clubs and Pubs only) Availability Setanta Sports is available through Foxtel for a price of $14.95 per month per set top unit. It is broadcast in widescreen, on channnel 525.

Setanta Sports is now available on Austar channel 510 as part of the 'Sports Extra' tier, which is priced at $6 more than the standard sports tier. It is also possible to subscribe to Setanta Sports with your own satellite dish on the Globecast Australia platform, for a price of $14.95 a month. Setanta By Broadband is available to Australian residents for $14.99 a month. Events are shown live and on demand, however not all coverage is available on Setanta By Broadband. Setanta Premium service is only available to pubs and clubs. Coverage Soccer Setanta's is the leading broadcaster of soccer in Australia currently covering a variety of competitions from Europe & South America. Setanta Sports is the only channel in Australia who will broadcast coverage of every game of the UEFA Euro 2008 Finals in June 2008. Setanta current soccer rights are: Leagues * Italian Serie A (certain teams home fixtures) * German Bundesliga * All Ireland Club Championships traditionally played on St Patrick's Day. Cricket Setanta has signed up with Nimbus Sports to show One Day International and Test match cricket taking place in India and Bangladesh's from November 2007.

Coverage started with the recent Pakistani tour of India in November & December 2007. Upcoming serie being broadcast by Setanta are * South African Tour of Bangladesh in February & March 2008 * South African Tour of India in March & April 2008 Canada On August 10, 2007, a Canadian version of Setanta Sports was launched. Currently the service is available to Shaw digital cable customers on channel 154, Rogers digital cable customers on channel 429, EastLink digital cable customers on channel 500, Bell ExpressVu on channel 420, Star Choice on channel 239 and other carriers. Setanta offered a free viewing of the station from August 10, 2007 until September 10, 2007, after which it became a stand-alone service at $14.99 per month.

Setanta Sports News launches today -New channel offers a fresh approach to sports news broadcasting- LONDON, November 29th, 2007: Setanta Sports News, the new 24-hour rolling sports news channel, launches today and marked the occasion with a sporting bash at Urban Golf in Soho, attended by sporting greats such as golfing legend, Darren Clarke, WBO Champion Enzo Maccarinelli and Setanta Sports pundits Tim Sherwood and Les Ferdinand. Setanta Sports News offers free-to-air sports news broadcasting for millions of homes across the UK with a straightforward and fresh approach to delivering the latest breaking sports news and exciting new programming to sports fans. Highlights include a weekly chat show with Kelly Dalglish, a live phone in show with footballing legend Steve Claridge, and ‘The Goal Rush’, which will be the only programme on a free-to-air sports news channel to show all the goals from the Barclays Premier League and Clydesdale Bank Premier League. Bright new personalities who want to stamp their mark on sports broadcasting will give the channel a young and vibrant on-air feel.

Ex-Real Madrid TV presenter, Ashley House, former BBC Sport reporter, Roann Ghosh and ex-Commonwealth Games athlete, Lisa Knights, are just a few of the presenters confirmed to front up the channel. The on-air team will also be focused on generating debate and engaging with sports fans across the nation, including the channels latest ‘fan-correspondents’ who will represent their teams and sports across the UK. Leonard Ryan, joint Chief Executive, Setanta Sports, said: “Setanta Sports News was created to offer a straightforward and fresh way of delivering sports news and quality content to fans across the UK. I am delighted that Setanta has taken this major step forward and created this cutting edge sports news service that can be enjoyed in millions of homes across the UK.” Malcolm Wall, CEO of Content, Virgin Media, said: “Setanta Sports News will offer a real choice for sports fans, by providing the very best in breaking sports news and commentary.

At Virgin Media, we always look to offer consumers the very best in entertainment and this channel is another way of doing just that.” Setanta Sports News will be available free-to-air on the Virgin Media platform, and also on satellite, and it will cover, in detail, all relevant sports stories from the UK and abroad, regardless of whether the event is broadcast on a Setanta channel. Simon Green, Setanta Sports News, said: “Everyone at Setanta is very excited that Setanta Sports News launching today. When we set out to create this channel we placed the fans at the heart of our programming, which is something that will really come across on screen.” Setanta Sports News is jointly owned by Setanta Sports and Virgin Media, and produced by ITN. Its EPG number on Virgin Media is 518. The satellite EPG number is 435.

-ends- For further information - please contact: Richard Tompkins or Sally Payne at Braben on 020 7566 2990 or email richardt@braben.co.uk or sally@braben.co.uk Verity Jukes at Virgin Media on 0207 909 2120 or email Verity.Jukes@virginmedia.co.uk Editor information: Setanta Sports Setanta Sports is a leading international pay-TV sports broadcaster operating nine channels in the UK, Ireland, North America and Australia. Founded in 1992, its premium sports content is available to more than 50 million digital homes worldwide. Setanta operates more sports channels than any other broadcaster in the UK and Ireland and has recently started broadcasting the Barclays Premier League in the UK for the first time. Virgin Media Virgin Media is an innovative and pioneering UK entertainment and communications business. For the first time consumers can get everything they need from one company - the UK's only quad play of TV, broadband, phone and mobile plus the most advanced TV on demand service available, the UK’s first high definition TV service and V+, our high specification personal video recorder.

We're the UK’s most popular residential broadband provider, the largest virtual mobile network operator and the second largest provider of pay TV and home phone. Virgin Media owns two content businesses - Virgin Media Television (VMTV) and sit-up. VMTV owns seven entertainment channels - Virgin 1, Living, Living 2, Bravo, Bravo 2, Challenge, Trouble - and is a 50% partner in UKTV, which consists of ten channels including UKTV Gold and UKTV History. sit-up runs retail TV channels bid tv, price-drop tv and speed auctiontv. Virgin Media is the largest Virgin company in the world and has almost 10 million customers. To find out more, visit DTG :: News :: Setanta to return to the UK Setanta to return to the UK Member login Setanta to return to the UK The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) has accepted applications from Setanta Sports Channel Ireland Limited and Setanta Radio Limited for the provision of two new satellite television services, Setanta Sports 1 and Setanta Sports. According to the BCI, Setanta Sports will broadcast live and delayed sporting events, mainly at weekends, and will target audiences in Ireland and the UK.

Setanta Sports 1 will be a subscription service that will broadcast live and delayed sports programmes, sports news and highlights programmes to Irish audiences. Speaking at the contract signing of the two services on 27 July, BCI Chief Executive Michael O'Keeffe said: "these are positive developments for the Setanta companies ad for Irish broadcasting. Setanta has established itself as a key player in the broadcasting sector here and this new investment, coupled with the new channels, should secure its future in Ireland after a difficult number of months." The BCI has also approved proposed changes in the ownership of Setanta Sports Channel Ireland Limited and Setanta Sports North America. Gaiety Investments is increasing its shareholding in Setanta Sports Channel Ireland Limited from 20% to 60%. The remaining 40% will be owned by a new company Sabloss Limited. The main shareholders in Sabloss are Michael O'Rourke, Leonard Ryan and Mark O'Meara. Sabloss has also purchased 100% of the shares in Setanta Sports North America Limited. DTG Staff | 29.07.2009 Setanta back in UK? | Setanta back in UK?

July 24, 2009 Setanta Sports may be back broadcasting in the UK after the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland granted two new satellite licences.Setanta Sports 1 will be a subscription service broadcasting live and recorded events to the Irish Republic while Setanta Sports is described by the BCI as broadcasting "live and delayed sporting events, mainly at weekends, and will target audiences in Ireland and the UK." The BCI has also approved proposed changes in the ownership of Setanta Sports Channel Ireland Limited and Setanta Sports North America. Gaiety Investments, the investment vehicle for music promoter Denis Desmond and his wife, Caroline Downey, is increasing its shareholding from 20% to 60%. A new company, Sabloss, owned by Setanta's founders Michael O'Rourke and Leonard Ryan, and the former chief executive of the UK operations Mark O'Meara, will own the remaining 40%. Related posts: Setanta scores with dish debut - Aug. 1, 2007 Setanta scores with dish debut A small Irish broadcaster looks set to join the big leagues, reports Fortune's Matt Boyle.

By Matthew Boyle , Fortune writer August 1 2007: 10:03 AM EDT NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Setanta, a small Irish broadcaster, took another step towards joining the big leagues by signing a deal with EchoStar Communications' ( Charts , Fortune 500 ) Dish Network to carry its 24-hour digital sports channel, Fortune has learned. Beginning August 1, Dish Network's 13.4 million subscribers will be able to watch English soccer (including live Premiership matches), rugby and other international sports in a deal that will almost double Setanta's potential penetration in U.S. homes. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Dish's satellite rival DirecTV ( Charts , Fortune 500 ) already offers Setanta on an a la carte basis to its 16 million customers for $14.99 a month. If you're wondering "What the heck is Setanta?" you're not alone. Save for the bleary-eyed English and Irish ex-pats in America who cram themselves into pubs on weekend mornings to watch Setanta's live broadcasts of big European soccer matches, privately-held Setanta barely registers on the sporting landscape here in the United States.

But that might soon change, especially if America's on-again, off-again relationship with soccer heats up thanks to David Beckham's arrival in Los Angeles. And even if soccer remains on the periphery here, Setanta's burgeoning presence across the pond in Britain - where it helped break Rupert Murdoch's stranglehold on live coverage of Premiership matches - and its blue-chip backing by Goldman Sachs and Benchmark Capital ensure that the broadcaster, whose name means "the little one" in Gaelic, should continue to punch above its weight. Challenging Murdoch's British Sky Broadcasting was probably the last thing on the minds of Leonard Ryan and Michael O'Rourke when, in the summer of 1990, the two Irishmen rented out a club in London's Ealing neighborhood in order to watch their beloved national soccer team play the Dutch in the World Cup. As the game was not available on English television, the lads took matters into their own hands, charging close to 1,000 fans 10 pounds each to watch their jerry-rigged satellite feed. "We were just friends who wanted to see a football match," recalls Ryan, who was 22 at the time and working for an insurance company.

"We lost about 5,000 pounds doing it, but it showed us that there was a market for displaced sports fans." The founders grew their nascent business by catering to that market - showing Gaelic sports to Irish fans in pubs across Europe, then soccer matches to Brits in the United States. In 2000, Setanta moved beyond bars by offering the European soccer championships on a pay-per-view basis to American homes via Dish and DirecTV. "There were some hairy times early on," Ryan recalls. "We took some big gambles." One such gamble was outbidding the BBC for rights to broadcast Scotland's top soccer league in 2004. "We put the whole company on the line for that," Ryan says. Then, last year, came twin coups - breaking Sky's monopoly on live Premiership matches by paying over $700 million for the rights to 46 games each season for the next three years. (The 2007-2008 Premiership season begins August 11.) Setanta also secured the final tranche of 400 million pounds in funding from a consortium that includes Goldman Sachs and venture capital firm Benchmark.

"As a group, no one company, including Sky, has such a wealth of experience in the UK sports market," says Ynon Kreiz, Benchmark's point man on the deal. For example, Trevor East, Setanta's director of sport and a former senior executive at Sky, has over 30 years of experience in the industry. Setanta's war chest will go largely to beefing up its operations outside the United States - it broadcasts in close to 20 countries and is the number-two sports broadcaster in Britain, with nine separate channels covering various European soccer leagues, PGA golf, auto racing, English horseracing and other events. Ryan hopes that Setanta's enhanced content and distribution will boost the network's UK subscriber base to one million by the end of the year, up considerably from the current 350,000. Meanwhile, in the United States, the next big step is cutting a distribution deal with a big cable system like Comcast ( Charts ), Charter or Time Warner ( Charts , Fortune 500 ). "Eventually, it has to happen," says Benchmark's Kreiz, whose favorite soccer team is Manchester United.

No deal is in place yet, but look for cable systems to test the waters with pay-per-view offerings in soccer-mad markets like Chicago and New England first. Setanta, which employs 300 and should double its 2006 revenue figure of 75 million euros this year, has also boosted its profile by sponsoring the USA Rugby team. Setanta's U.S. CEO Roger Hall says a similar deal in the soccer world is possible. What else is on the horizon? Perhaps live cricket, which is "the big unknown for us," says Hall. "It's a big sport worldwide, but that's a lot of hours [to broadcast]." Cricket in America? An unlikely pairing for sure, but then, few would have ever thought that David Beckham would ply his trade on American turf. How Setanta survives and thrives in the competitive world of TV sport By using this website, you consent to our use of cookies. For more information on cookies see our Cookie Policy .

X How Setanta survives and thrives in the competitive world of TV sport After founding the sports network in 1990, owner Mickey O’Rourke has seen it endure some tough times Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 02:00 Mickey O’Rourke, Setanta Sports. Photograph: Eric Luke / The Irish Times “That’s Asia and that’s Kazakhstan on that screen there,” says Mickey O’Rourke, co-founder and owner of Setanta Sports, pointing at various monitors as we take a whistle-stop tour of the control rooms for the multitude of channels and feeds operated by the Irish broadcaster. There’s a feed into Newstalk, too, where Pat Kenny can be seen hosting his morning radio show. “That feed is for Off the Ball, which we stream at night,” O’Rourke adds. The Newry-born entrepreneur is a director in the national radio station and a shareholder through Setanta Media Holdings’ stake in the business. There’s a hum of contentment at Broadcasting House, as we walk through Setanta’s busy base and settle in O’Rourke’s corner office, which has a nice view across the Liffey. And why shouldn’t there be?

Setanta has had a strong couple of years since signing a deal in 2013 with BT to bundle the then fledgling sports channels of the British telco with its two Setanta channels for an Irish audience. BT had won two packs of live English Premier League football rights and partnered with Setanta to offer a bundled pack of five channels in Ireland. Audiences here can get Setanta Ireland and Setanta Sports 1, BT 1 and 2 and ESPN for €21.99 a month or €199 a year. O’Rourke describes it as a “game changer” for a company that almost went bust in 2009 after its UK business collapsed under the weight of its debts, having sought to take on Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Sports in the pay TV game. “Business is very good,” O’Rourke beams. “Every revenue stream is growing strongly. We invested heavily in 2013 with the BT content and the ESPN channel and a whole host of other content like the Irish soccer internationals and the [English] FA Cup. It started bearing fruit in 2014 and has continued in 2015.

ADVERTISEMENT “We’re also beginning to benefit from the return of the Irish economy. We are a consumer-facing brand and it’s been a tough couple of years for our subscribers. so the fact that the economy is turning is helping us.” Subscriber secrecy There’s a long-held tradition at Setanta to be tightlipped about its financial details and subscriber numbers. A web of companies, some in Ireland and some abroad, make it difficult to get a clear picture of how the business is performing. After a bit of cajoling, O’Rourke says revenues for the “whole Irish business” are circa €30 million. “We probably grew by 20 per cent in 2014 over 2013. Maybe 25 per cent in revenue. It’s double-digit growth,” he adds. Subscriber numbers? “That’s another number we don’t reveal,” he says with a smile. “We say it’s over 100,000 subs in the Republic. I’m giving you a lot of information here. I don’t think I’ve ever given that number out. It’s a combination of [customers] on Sky and UPC [platforms]. Well over 100,000.

“We’ve over two million viewers who would have access to Setanta Ireland through UPC [basic TV package]. We’ll see that number grow as Eircom and now Vodafone grow their TV offers.” The company made a “small profit” in 2014 and “we’ll do the same” this year in spite of a €4 million investment in the start of a high-definition channel in August, the launch of a Setanta player playback service on broadband, and the acquisition of live rights to Uefa’s Champions League and Europa League competitions for three years from next season. Pay rises He’s predicting a double-digit rise in revenues for this year, too. And the benefits are beginning to trickle down to employees – Setanta has 125 full-time staff and 40-50 part-timers in Dublin. Late last year, O’Rourke gave all staff shares in the business, and pay rises of between 2 and 5 per cent were awarded in December. “Basically, everyone in the company has shares,” he says. “It’s nice to do although obviously it doesn’t necessarily mean anything until we start paying dividends. But it’s good, you know.

It means they can share in the growth of the business.” On when a dividend might be paid, O’Rourke said “2017 anyway but maybe next year” with a strong wind at its back. O’Rourke rattles off a list of box office sports that should draw viewers in over the coming months. There’s the business end of the Premier League and FA Cup competitions in England, the Irish soccer team’s glamour home friendly against England in early June, Leinster’s European Rugby Champions Cup quarter-final against Bath, and coverage of Conor McGregor’s quest for a UFC title. It’s all a far cry from the dark days of 2009 when Setanta almost folded after a bold bid to take on Murdoch’s Sky Sports in its own backyard. With backing from heavyweight financial investors such as Balderton Capital , Doughty Hanson and Goldman Sachs, Setanta secured two packs of live TV Premier League rights in England to headline an offering that also included Scottish Premier League soccer, PGA golf in the United States and a raft of other sports. “In hindsight, we bought the rights very cheaply,” O’Rourke says.

“We paid about £130 million [a season] for 46 games, or roughly £2.8 million per game. Sky are paying about £11 million per game now and BT about £7.6 million. “And they were good games we had. Good kick-off times. Saturday at 5.30pm. We had a great team of people. We were the first to bring Premier League to [UK digital terrestrial service] Freeview. So you could pay £9.99 and see the Premier League. That allowed 15 or 16 million people to have access to Premier League. We sold almost 400,000 boxes. ADVERTISEMENT “We probably had, between satellite, cable and Freeview, somewhere around 3.5 million [households]. We did a deal with [cable TV operator] Virgin where 1.8 million households were able to see the Premier League for free.

It was a unique deal for them and grew their base.” O’Rourke says Setanta was “pretty close” to breakeven in the UK but it all came crashing down in 2009 after it lost one of its Premier League packs to Sky when the rights came up for renewal. It still had one season of its original deal to run but couldn’t secure the necessary funding to keep the show on the road. “We simply hit a liquidity gap,” he says. “We needed about £40 million. But there was no money available for anyone. We obviously had big investors . . . but they were all experiencing their own challenges.” Setanta’s collapse in the UK cost O’Rourke “a lot” of money. “That’s life, you know. We weren’t the only ones to have invested money in Ireland and lost out. We’ve done very well since.” He has “no issues with Sky”, even though its pinching of one of Setanta’s Premier League packs probably hastened the demise of Setanta in the UK. Separately, the Irish business was just “days away” from folding and wouldn’t have survived without the support of Irish concert promoter Denis Desmond – a “great partner and a good guy . . .

very supportive”. “We [O’Rourke and his co-founders Leonard Ryan and Mark O’Meara] had huge challenges to keep the business going. We didn’t even have any income for the first couple of months because we couldn’t take money out of the accounts. Our staff and suppliers were very patient and we got through it.” O’Rourke says the net churn in customers at the time was “probably 30 or 40 per cent” when “normally you’d be growing”. “We had to massively reduce our costs. Our salaries went down by 30 per cent at the top end to 2 per cent at the bottom. We reduced every bit of cost. We’re now one of the low-cost producers in the business. It would cost us about one-third to do an event of what it would cost Sky or RTÉ . That’s something we’ve had to learn.” Newry native It could all have been so different for O’Rourke. Born in Newry, his family moved to Killiney in Dublin when he was nine. He was schooled in Blackrock College before doing commerce in UCD and a masters in entrepreneurship.

In 1989, O’Rourke moved to London to take up a post as a graduate trainee with NatWest bank, where he spent two years. While in London, he met Ryan at a party and the two struck up a relationship that endures. In 1990, they organised a big-screen showing of the Ireland-England match at the Italia ’90 World Cup in a London pub for their friends. They then cajoled the BBC into giving them a feed to show the Ireland-Netherlands game for “around two grand”, as this decisive group match wasn’t going to be on TV in the UK. “It cost so much to put up a projector and to hire a venue, that we didn’t actually make any money on it,” he recalls. “But we discovered there was a huge appetite from the Irish community to see live sport.” GAA rights followed and, after a couple of years double-jobbing in a family business in Newry, O’Rourke committed himself full-time to what is now the Setanta business. Ryan, O’Meara and Desmond have since sold their holdings to O’Rourke, who is now flying solo.

ADVERTISEMENT Having rebuilt the Irish business, he has since sold off some of its overseas offshoots at a profit. Just last week the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission here cleared the sale of its Asia business to John Malone’s Discovery Networks. O’Rourke, Ryan and O’Meara continue to work together through an investment vehicle called Danu Capital Partners. “We’ve invested in a couple of businesses. West Cork Distillers – a good whiskey distillery in Skibbereen that is doing well. We’ve also invested in a company called Rain Safe, which takes rain water and uses a combination of filters and UV light to ensure it’s clean and reusable. Its very exciting.” Dublin pubs Danu is also spending about €15 million on acquiring four pubs that were part of the Capital Bars group – Dragon, the George, Howl at the Moon and Cafe en Seine, although this prime Dawson Street venue is subject to a tussle with landlord Louis Fitzgerald . “They’re all slightly different,” he explains. “They’re central-Dublin-based, we like that and we have a view that the economy is on the up and that tourism is on the up.

“We’re completely gutting and refurbing the Dragon [at a cost of €750,000]. We’re going to slightly upgrade the George. It works really well. “When we take hold of Cafe en Seine, assuming we do because we’re arguing with the landlord about taking ownership, the idea is to upgrade that as well. “For Howl . . . that needs a massive refurb.” The Irish business and a sister channel in Eur-Asia are the remaining parts of Setanta owned by O’Rourke. For all its strengths, Setanta is a small fish in the very large pond of pay-sports broadcasting. Having been in the broadcasting business in one form or other since 1990, Setanta is very “personal” to O’Rourke. There’s no formal exit strategy, he says, but he wouldn’t rule out a deal with a bigger player at some point in the future. “We have a five-year plan to continually improve the business . . . we think we’ve got a sustainable portfolio of content. But you’d never say never. “There’s tremendous logic. Content is king . . .

Sport is one of the great differentiators for platforms and Sky has shown how well it has worked for them and sport has transformed BT’s business. “You’d never say that Setanta wouldn’t be under a UPC, Vodafone or Eircom but, at the same time, we run the business to live today.”

Question: Michael O'Rourke and Leonard Ryan established which satellite network?
Answer: Setanta